The picture above with the caption, We are on our way to Boise was supposed to be posted last Saturday. Somehow it wasn’t and we are now back. Maybe the fact that it didn’t post is good because the picture is way more dramatic than the actual drive. Here is a more typical scene.
To be continued.
After hanging around Michele’s family cabin all morning, soaking up the sunshine and what I always think of as Eastern Sierra air – a distinct dry earth and pine smell; strong, warm, sun, cool air in the shade – we went out for a burger in Truckee.
Aside by Michele: BurgerMe is a wonderful find, with very tasty grass-fed burgers. End aside.
Then, while driving to Lake Tahoe the long way around, we got waylaid at Martis Creek where we took an afternoon walk.
Eastern Sierra meadows – maybe any high altitude meadows – are among my favorite places to walk. Especially in the late afternoon. With their familiar smells and sounds, they are one of my spiritual homes. Warm, somehow-how-soft feeling, it brings back distant memories of the end of the day after a hard hike or climb. Today, the hard hike was getting a burger in Truckee but the meadow is still glorious.
At the beginning of this week, India had the largest electrical blackout in human history (which, in terms of electricity is not all that long, less than 150 years). 670 million people were without power, basically from the Bangladesh border to Jaisalmer near Pakistan. The cynical part of me wants to say How could they tell? When we were in India, near Jaisalmer, there were power shortages all the time. But that was 17 Indian years ago – probably over 45 USA years based on rate of growth – and India has changed.
As an aside, when we were in India, we had a driver that took us a round in an Hindustan Ambassador which was really a 1956 Morris Oxford made in India. To say that it was a primitive car is being generous. The first thing we were told was to memorize our license number because all Ambassadors were the same color – an off creamy white – and at popular places, there could be dozens and dozens of them lined up. End aside.
What India seemed very good at was working around the power outages. Like Scotland – or England, I guess – the Indian impoverished aristocrats rent out their castles, or forts, or palaces, as hotels to make ends meet. That way they can still cling to their social status. One night we were sitting on a previously royal balcony having a drink and waiting for diner with several other tourist when the power went out. It was pretty magical, the balcony overlooking the city below glowing in the moonlight. The hotel staff immediately showed up and lit all sorts of candles which didn’t significantly reduce our view.
We spent the cocktail hour telling horror stories – the kind of horror stories when it is pretty hard to tell if the story teller is complaining or bragging (mostly bragging as I remember) – and laughing about our travels around India. When it was time for dinner we were led into a huge dining hall with all the separate tables pushed together with a couple of huge candelabras lighting the banquet. It was a great save and one of my most memorable travel moments.
The next morning we took some portraits of some of the locals.
The desert does lots of things well, in my opinion, but civilization is not one of them. Almost any built up area in the desert looks seedy and Las Vegas is not an exception. Except for the Vegas Strip: there the neon lights work just perfectly. The neon sparkles in the clear air and everything seems alive and crisp and clean.
My plan had been to park the truck at one end of the strip, walk down it and back with my tele-zoom, and then repeat with a wide angle lens. It was further down and back as well as a lot more interesting than I expected and Ed had said that he expected to put a wrap on his frolicking early, so I only made one pass using tele. So most of what I have are detail type shots with almost no street views.
As an aside, one thing that surprised me was that I saw several Muslim women in Hijabs. More Hijabs than I saw at Edwin’s graduation in Freemont which has a large Muslim population. End aside. I also saw more than several people dressed in costumes like the Hello Kitty woman below. I think that you could have your picture taken with them for a small fee – that is if you ever wanted to have your picture taken with Hello Kitty, or Spiderman, or a couple of characters that I didn’t recognize – and the costumes themselves seemed too professional and elaborate to be home made or spontaneous. (Maybe the rent them from central casting – I suspect that the women dressed as showgirls fall into that category.)
Of course there is gambling everywhere but gambling is far from the entire show. There are rollercoaster rides,
and lots of themed dining, events, shows,
lots and lots of shopping (the real American pastime),
and lots of sex in all kinds of flavors (I wonder if the HOT BABES direct to you are delivered in the truck).
Meanwhile, back at Ed Dieden and my trip to Las Vegas for Ed’s Vietnam Marine unit’s reunion, we were camped in Mojave National Preserve. We spent a second night at a campsite marked by a preexisting fire ring and some nice stone chairs. I am not a fan of preexisting camp sites, the heavy use usually results in a dirtier site and the food scraps attracts rodents – which, in my imagination, at least, attracts snakes (not that I have ever seen a snake at a campsite) – but this was a nice site among exfoliating granite boulders. We got up, skipped breakfast – no stove – and after a short drive down a dirt road, breakfast at the Mad Greek’s in Baker, and a long drive down a paved road, we got to Vegas.
Once we were there, after showering and shaving, Ed went to the Hospitality Room for his Marine reunion and I was free to roam around Las Vegas searching for the Magic.
I still had my no prime lens problem, so I planned to wander around with a 70~200 tele-zoom for some details and then go back to the truck and switch to a 17~40 wide-angle-zoom and shoot some street scenes. It didn’t work out that way,